In New Jersey, Smiley Sunday Near End of a Mean Campaign

By RICHARD LEZIN JONES; Josh Benson and John Holl contributed reporting for this article.

Published: November 7, 2005

Even by the bare-knuckled standards of national political campaigns, the contentious race for New Jersey governor between two multimillionaires, United States Senator Jon S. Corzine and Douglas R. Forrester, has been particularly venomous.

Last week, Mr. Forrester quoted Mr. Corzine's ex-wife in an ad attacking the senator's integrity. Mr. Corzine responded by calling that move an act of desperation and continued his own negative advertisements against Mr. Forrester.

And the campaign, which had already been rocked by questions about a loan that Mr. Corzine had given to a former companion who is a state union leader, reached a low point when both candidates had to fend off questions about women with whom they were rumored to be romantically involved, prompting lurid news reports.

The rancor of the last week in the campaign played against the backdrop of public opinion polls that showed a race that seemed to be tightening by the day, as what had been a lead of more than 10 percentage points for Mr. Corzine for much of the campaign dwindled in some surveys to the low single digits.

The race is one of only two for governor in the nation on Tuesday, and as in the other, in Virginia, the incumbent is not running.

As Senator Corzine and Mr. Forrester crisscrossed the state on Sunday, images of the smiling candidates shaking hands at Elks lodges and ascending church pulpits contrasted with the way they have savaged each other in the past week, including an angry, face-to-face argument during a debate televised live on Saturday night.

Mr. Corzine, who made his fortune in investment banking and became co-chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, and Mr. Forrester, who owns a company that manages prescription drug benefits, dipped into their personal wealth and broke spending records, buying time for commercials that often ran to the negative and the inflammatory.

But on Sunday each seemed sensitive to the idea that the bitterness of the campaign might alienate many of the state's voters.

''With about 40 hours left until people have a chance to vote, I really think it is important that we stay on the issues that will impact people's lives,'' Senator Corzine said after an appearance on Sunday morning at a Baptist church in Trenton, where he acknowledged that the race had ''spun out of control.''

But along the campaign trail Sunday, each candidate was being scrutinized by voters weary of bickering by two wealthy men, and tired, too, of attack ads and published reports that named women with whom each man was rumored to be involved.

''One thing that bothered me is I'm not hearing a lot about what their plan is, just how bad the other guy is,'' said Alfred Olson, 50, of Mount Laurel, after listening to Mr. Forrester at a diner in Marlton. ''To tell the truth, I actually expected more from both of them.''

Mr. Forrester, after greeting voters with his wife, Andrea, on Sunday morning, acknowledged that sentiment, which has been bolstered by poll results showing that voters were fed up with negative ads even before the events of the past week.

''I think that there is a lot of discouragement and there has been for months about a lot of the ads that have been run,'' Mr. Forrester said. ''We've always tried to be straightforward. What I'm trying to say is, if people want to change things, they need to vote for me.''

The polls continue to show Mr. Corzine ahead, with a lead that ranges from 2 percentage points to about 12. The polls also show that the number of people who remain undecided is dwindling. Still, New Jersey's electorate is notoriously fickle, and it may be difficult to place much credence in poll results. Christie Whitman trailed James J. Florio in several major polls in the 1993 governor's race but defeated him by about 26,000 votes.

Mr. Forrester hoped to erode Senator Corzine's advantage further over the next two days. ''You know, all the polling that I'm aware of has been done really before there was an opportunity for everybody to see recent ads,'' Mr. Forrester said. ''So I think it's unlikely that there was any reflection. Obviously, we'll see Tuesday.''

As the final hours ticked away on the campaign, both Mr. Forrester and Senator Corzine tried to stay on message about the issues -- property taxes and corruption -- of most importance to voters, and to consolidate their bases. At stop after stop, Mr. Corzine sought to remind voters in Democratic and socially liberal New Jersey of his record in the Senate. Mr. Forrester, meanwhile, assailed that record.

Mr. Corzine's nine-event schedule on Sunday included the visit to a predominantly black church in Trenton before he sprinted across the state for a string of appearances up and down New Jersey's eastern edge. Mr. Forrester had a comparatively light schedule of five appearances, mostly the so-called meet-and-greets at diners and shopping malls.

For much of the day, Mr. Corzine was joined by Senator Barack Obama, a rising star in the Democratic Party who represents Mr. Corzine's native state, Illinois, and who received help last fall from Mr. Corzine, as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in winning election.

Speaking at Shiloh Baptist Church with the informal diction and rolling cadences of a preacher, Senator Obama reminded parishioners of Mr. Corzine's record in the Senate, including his opposition to the war in Iraq and his efforts to fight genocide in the Sudan.

''I'm here to help my homeboy,'' Senator Obama said in a nod to the two men's shared Illinois roots.

Mr. Obama called Mr. Corzine ''a kindred spirit'' and told parishioners that they should not be discouraged from casting ballots by the ''slash-and-burn kind of politics'' that has typified the race in the past week.

''Our job as candidates is to talk about what we're going to do for the people who we hope to represent,'' Mr. Obama said, ''to talk about property taxes and to talk about health care issues and to talk about education. Those are the things Jon Corzine's talking about.''

Mr. Corzine continued to express regret about an answer in Saturday's debate, when he was caught flatfooted by a question about lowering the drinking age; Mr. Corzine did not know that the legal age was 21.

He also said that the testy tenor of the debate was a result of the format, in which, at one point, the moderator, Gabe Pressman of WNBC, asked each candidate to critique the other's TV ads. Combined, the candidates have spent $72 million on their campaigns so far -- a record for a governor's race in the state.

For his part, Mr. Forrester, the Republican, seemed satisfied by his showing in the debate. ''I felt that when I came away from the debate that everything we have been trying to communicate was laid out there in a very reasonable way,'' he said. ''And I would guess that the audience is going to look at that and say, 'Yep, we want a change.' ''

Still, after the vitriol of the last week, it seems that the change some voters most want to see is the conclusion of the race. ''It's like any other campaign,'' said Tom Stavros, who heard Mr. Forrester in Marlton. ''When it gets down to the last couple of weeks, everyone starts throwing mud. Everyone's seen this before. I guess that's why they're tired of it.''

Photos: Senators Barack Obama and Jon S. Corzine at a Trenton church. (Photo by Stephanie Keith for The New York Times); Douglas R. Forrester campaigning yesterday with his wife, Andrea, outside Olga's Diner in Marlton. (Photo by Dith Pran/The New York Times)(pg. B6)